It is a clever little farce, the story founded on a runaway match. There is some broad humour in it; but the dialogue is not brilliant, and no punning is attempted. The Cupid is a postboy, and the farce differs from most others in this: that there are interludes, and the postboy Cupid is gifted with a supernatural power of changing the scenes and filling up the plot by rhyming narrative. Its having been accepted anonymously, shows clearly enough the wonderful effect of Churchill's satire. Whitehead, as Campbell has observed, was too amiable to reply. He could not have penned verses so bitter, but to the strength of his moral qualities, rather than a deficiency in intellectual power, his silence is to be attributed. What he thought of his brilliant antagonist may be guessed from this fragment, printed in the edition of his works published after his death:
"So from his common place, when Churchill strings
Into some motley form his damn'd good things,
The purple patches everywhere prevail,
But the poor work has neither head nor tail."
Elsewhere he writes:
"Churchill had strength of thought, had power to paint,
Nor felt from principles the least restraint,
From hell itself his characters he drew,
And christened them by ev'ry name he knew;
For 'twas from hearsay he picked up his tales,
Where false and true by accident prevails:
Hence I, though older far, have lived to see
Churchill forgot, an empty shade like me."
The following lines on the same subject were found by Mr. Mason:
"That I'm his foe, ev'n Churchill can't pretend,
But—thank my stars!—he proves I am no friend:
Yet, Churchill, could an honest wish succeed,
I'd prove myself to thee a friend indeed;
For had I power, like that which bends the spheres
To music never heard by mortal ears,
Where, in his system, sits the central sun,
And drags reluctant planets into tune;
